the energy boom, housing is contributing to growth. also, the auto sector. however, if we look at consumer spending, it has begun to slow. it has slowed down. there's no reason to belief it's going to grow rather dramatically faster in the first half of next year. my view is without any action, the u.s. economy would grow at 2% to 3%. maybe a little less. with some action, say, $300 billion in cuts, then i have to subtract something for that, and i start to get close to zero. when you get close to zero, there's always the problem that the economy can't grow too slowly because it just loses momentum, and it's like a man on a bicycle and falls off. >> ali, what is the prescription here? what is the right balance between cutting these programs and the expenditures and also bringing revenue? >> look at it at a microlevel. peter talks about consumer spending, and you can put business spending into that. the bottom line is if everything that was bad in the fiscal cliff happened, there are some estimates it might take, you know, $2,500 out of the average family's s